One Dead, One Injured in Virgin Galactic Spacecraft Crash
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Virgin Galactic(MOJAVE, Calif.) — One person died and another suffered a major injury after Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo spacecraft crashed in California’s Mojave Desert on Friday.
California Highway Patrol confirmed the fatality and the injury, but did not specify the individuals involved.
Virgin Galactic confirmed the “in-flight anomaly” and said that its first concern was the safety of its pilots.
“Virgin Galactic’s partner Scaled Composites conducted a powered test flight of #SpaceShipTwo earlier today,” the company tweeted.
SpaceShipTwo was destroyed after it separated from its mother ship, White Knight Two, the company said.
“During the test, the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of SpaceShipTwo. WK2 landed safely,” according to the company. “Our first concern is the status of the pilots, which is unknown at this time.”
“We will work closely with relevant authorities to determine the cause of this accident and provide updates ASAP,” the company added.
The Federal Aviation Administration said that the crash occured just after 10:00 a.m. when “ground controllers at the Mojave Spaceport lost contact with SpaceShipTwo.”
“Space is hard and today was a tough day,” said George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic. He added, “The future rests in many ways on hard days like this.”
Stuart Witt, the CEO of Mojave Air and Space Port, said the death of the pilot was keenly felt.
“When we have a mishap from the test community, we find the test community is very small and we are human and it hurts,” Witt said.
The officials confirmed that both people involved in the incident were test pilots from the Virgina Galactic partner, Scaled Composites. The pilots were not identified.
Sheriff Donnie Younblood said, “I flew around the crash site. It’s a large area. The aircraft is in several different pieces.”
Virgin founder Richard Branson is expected to arrive in Mojave by Saturday morning. Also due at the site on Saturday is a team from the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB announced that they will send a full team of investigators, led by acting chairman Christopher Hart.
Witt said the exact cause of the “anomaly” that caused the crash remains unknown.
“From my eyes and my ears, I detected nothing,” Witt said.
“I knew [something was wrong] when other things weren’t happening. It wasn’t cause something happened, it was something’s not happening,” he said.
Whitesides said that a new fuel formulation was being used in this test flight, but said that it had been “proven and tested numerous times on the ground.”
The craft dubbed SpaceShipTwo was destroyed after it separated from its mother ship, White Knight Two, the company said.
Kevin Mickey, president of Scale Composites, explained that the mother ship flies the spacecraft to 45,000 feet, “then it’s released. It’s a glider in free fall. Then the rocket is lit and you are on your way.”
Virgin Galactic, part of British billionaire Richard Branson’s group of companies, has announced plans to operate a fleet of SpaceShipTwo vehicles for private sub-orbital flights.
“While not a NASA mission, the pain of this tragedy will be felt by all the men and women who have devoted their lives to exploration,” said a statement from NASA. “Space flight is incredibly difficult, and we commend the passion of all in the space community who take on risk to push the boundaries of human achievement.”
This is the second space mission to end catastrophically this week.
On Tuesday, an Antares rocket produced by Orbital Sciences exploded seconds after liftoff in Virginia while on a NASA-contracted supply mission to the International Space Station.
“This hasn’t been an easy week. It certainly has been a challenge,” Witt said. “But where I’m from this is where you find out your true character.”
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